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The Home Schooling Debate: Neoliberal Attacks on Teachers and the Welfare State

Explore the rise in home schooling, impact of neoliberalism on education, and implications for social justice. Should Mina be home educated? Are there hidden outcomes of home schooling? Should schools be privatized?

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The Home Schooling Debate: Neoliberal Attacks on Teachers and the Welfare State

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  1. Away with all teachers?

  2. Away with all teachers: The Home Schooling Debate

  3. The Phenomenon • Paper is from U.S. but similar debates taking place in this country. • Rise is numbers of children being home schooled. • Apple attempts to connect this to wider restructuring of society (‘conservative modernisation’)

  4. Through the eyes of power • A new hegemonic bloc: • imaginaries and fantasies • Neoliberals • Neoconservatives • Authoritarian populist

  5. The Welfare State • Welfare state established after WW2 (Keynesian economics) • Teaching a profession that formed part of the state • Teachers professionals afforded autonomy based on qualifications. • State seen as ‘legitimate’

  6. Neoliberal attacks • Bureaucrats hiding behind red tape • Professionals motivated by self interest and insulated from real world of competition. • New public management (1990s) began t0 transform public services....

  7. Adam Curtis

  8. Cocooning: a world free of conflict • Privatised consciousness • Worried about crime, violence, poor schools • Social homogeneity as a norm • Unwillingness to spend collectively • Atomisation (are we ‘Bowling Alone’?)

  9. Gated communities: safe and predictable reality • Complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty and proximity to ‘other’ replaced with well planned universe where everything is in rightful place. • Rich go to rich schools, Christians go to Christian schools..... • How many organisations do you belong to?

  10. The paradox of freedom • Desire for equality, recognition for beliefs and perspectives. • Fear uniformity and a lack of control. • We want everyone to be like us but we want a right to be different.

  11. Attacks on schooling • Incompetent teachers • Bureaucratic • Schools as violent, dangerous places

  12. Home Schooling • Facilitated by new tools (Internet). • Allows ‘customisation’ of our lives as individuals • Learning is ‘personalised’ • Is customisation and personalisation at the expense of local communities? • Mina expresses herself as an individual but where is the ‘social glue’?

  13. Two theories of social justice • Redistribution • Recognition

  14. Redistribution • Exploitation • Marginalisation • Deprivation

  15. Recognition • Interpretations • Representation • Being confronted with cultural patterns alien to one’s own

  16. The evidence • Neoliberal reform reproduces traditional hierarchies. • Those who already possess economic and cultural capital reap more benefits than those who do not. • Reduction in willingness of those who do not use state provision to pay taxes.

  17. Questions for your seminar • Should Mina be home educated? • What are the benefits? • What are the drawbacks? • What are the possible hidden outcomes of home schooling? • Should all schools be privatised? • Does the state have any duty of care towards home schooled children?

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